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Friday, April 27, 2018 - 11:05
So there I was this morning with the brain-weasels running non-stop in my head telling me, "Nobody actually cares about your stupid podcast. Nobody listens to it except by accident because they're subscrbed to the whole Lesbian Talk Show group. That's why nobody's sent you any questions for your silly 'Ask Sappho' segment. Because they Just. Don't. Care. Here, I'll prove it to you." And I ran a google search on the exact phrase "lesbian historic motif podcast" and scrolled through all the entries that are just podcast venues or my own website. And...wait. The Guardian? Must be some sort of aggregation glitch.
March 4, 2018 - "...three of the best lesbian podcasts...The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast"
I guess I'll even take "You need to focus but, god, you learn a lot." as a compliment.
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LHMP View comments (0)
Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - 15:10
A Note on Commenting
Before getting into the topic of today's post, I wanted to mention that I'm currently dealing with the disappearance of my previous comment-spam filter (Mollom) and my web gurus and I are trying out some new approaches. Unfortunately, the one we're currently trying still lets about a dozen spam comments through every day that need to be manually whacked. So I've temporarily set all comments to manual approval, which means that there may be a few hours delay between posting and approval. (Given that I get an average of one "real" comment per week as compared to the dozens of spam comments per day, this isn't likely to even be noticeable, much less annoying. But just in case...)
My goal is to have 1) No spam comments get through (because they tend to be nasty things with malicious links or at best porn/viagara/etc. links); 2) No captcha requirements (because I know your opinions on these); and 3) Allow for the optimistic possibility that real-time conversations might occur on occasion (so the current manual approval is not optimal). One possibility would be to block all comments that have live links in them. (Sometimes my real commenters leave links, but they could be text-only and be relatively functional.) Another possibility would be to allow people to set up guest accounts on the website and then let people with accounts comment without manual approval. The website software has this functionality, but I don't know how people would feel about needing yet one more online account to do something they're used to doing more easily. One approach that I've absolutely vetoed is the "use your fb or twitter account to comment" approach because I don't want to require my commenters to link their activity here to Big Brother's attention.
At any rate, if you run into any oddities, that's likely what's going on (and if you spot a spam comment, don't worry, I'll smash it).
The Main Event
I may very well have posted something on this in the past--sometimes I forget whether I've actually written about something or only thought it through. Having literary interests that cut across a number of different communities from various angles, I'm fascinated by the nuances of genre labels that purport to indicate the same concept. In this case: books focused on women who love women. And being a cognitive linguist, I've paid close attention to the ways people use the various terms: the contexts they're used in, the subsets of material they're applied to, and especially the types of books people will most closely associate with them when they're being unselfconsious about genre categories.
This is not a rigorous scientific study, but these are my general conclusions about the functional meanings of several of these terms. The fascinating thing is that if people are discussing their meanings self-consciously, you usually get claims that they all mean the same thing and cover the same scope of books. And it's true that any of these terms can be used for almost every book that features a female character who has romantic or sexual interest in women. But it's sort of like when people are trying to define the category "filk music".[*] You'll certainly hear people say, "Anything someone performs at a filk sing is filk. End of story." But when you pay attention to how people use the word across a large corpus of examples, it's clearly more particular and nuanced (though far from unanimous) than that. So I'm interested in the meanings that emerge from usage, not the definitions the words can be forced into.
[*] If the word "filk" is unfamiliar to you, don't worry about it too much. Or Google it. You may be fascinated.
The terms I'm going to talk about today (though far from all of them in use) are: lesfic, f/f, wlw, queer [applied to books], LGBTQ+ [applied to books]. Append the hedge "in my perception based on how I've encountered the term" to everythign I post below. I'm not going to repeat it for every statement. The descriptions below are prototype feature clusters, not hard-and-fast "necessary and sufficient conditions." (See comment about working from a cognitive linguistics framework.)
Lesfic - The core meaning focuses around the presence of the following characteristics: Protagonist(s) is clearly identified in-story as a lesbian or bisexual woman. Protagonist(s) is not in a romantic or sexual relationship with a man within the scope of the story. There is a default expectation that the author will be female and identify as queer in some fashion and that the publisher will primarily focus on the lesfic genre (unless self-published). The most prototypical members of this category will be contemporary realistic erotic romance. In general, the more differences there are from that prototype (e.g., non-contemporary, or paranormal rather than realistic, or non-erotic, or non-romantic mystery/thriller/etc.) the less likely readers will be to reflexively consider a book lesfic. (As demonstrated by things like spontaneous inclusion as examples.) To some extent, the term lesfic is associated with reader communities in which the majority of members (though not all) self-identify as lesbian. It is not uncommon for someone who identifies as a lesfic reader to read primarily or solely within that genre and to be unaware of or uninterested in books from large publishers even when they include lesbian content.
F/F - This label comes out of the terminology of fan fiction, indicating "female /female" as contrasted with m/m=male/male, or f/m=female/male, or other possible combinations and longer strings. In general, the term implies that a story is focused centrally on a sexual relationship that is usually, although not necessarily, also romantic. F/f can also encompass stories about isolated sexual encounters by women who don't identify as lesbian or bi. The use of this category label creates an expectation of some degree of erotic content. It is very common for authors who identify their work with an f/f label also write stories about other gender pairings. (And, in general, when an author who writes across a spectrum of gender pairs writes a story about two women, they are more likely to identify it as "an f/f story" than as, for example, "a lesfic story".) The use of f/f tends to imply a character-focused genre work, though the genre may be romance, mystery, sff, paranormal, etc. There is no specific expectation as to the gender or sexual orientation of either the author or reader of a work identified as f/f. The use of the term f/f in relation to publisher type is complex. Within category romance, I rarely see it used to describe books from major publishers, but major romance publishers rarely if ever publish romances involving two women. It's used for romances published by small presses or self-published. I do see it used sometimes for books from major sff publishers, and it's used for small/self-published books in all genres.
WLW - I have seen statements that this particular term (standing for "Woman Loving Woman") originated among black authors and readers. I haven't seen a correlation in usage that corresponds to that, but I may simply not be seeing the conversations that would provide the data, given that I'm not part of the relevant communities. I encounter this term much less commonly and so I don't have as strong an impression of the nuances of usage, but it feels to me as if it conveys many of the same genre features as Lesfic, but without the same implication of a specific author/reader community context. It feels similar to f/f in the sense of identifying the gender (but not necessarily the sexual orientation) of the characters, with the default expectation of romance as a significant plot element. I don't have a good sense of whether the use of wlw correlates with the author's sexual orientation, but I don't think I've seen it used in relation to male authors (whereas I definitely see f/f used by and for male authors).
Queer - In general, this label seems to correlate with stories that include a variety of genders and sexualities among the characters, or at least for works by authors who cover that wider scope in their body of work. There is a sense that the works identified as queer are not targeting a specific readership (other than "readers who aren't put off by the word "queer"). There is also a correlation with authors who are less likely to identify themselves using more specific terms like "lesbian". In general, I tend to see this as a genre category label more in the context of SFF than, for example, for categories like contemporary romance. However this may be due to skewing in my data collection. There seems to be a tendency for books by major publishers to use/be described using queer or LGBTQ+ rather than any of the previous terms.
LGBTQ+ - (For "+" read: any possible continuation of the acronym of whatever length and specificity.) This is a bit of an odd one and I'm going to be a bit provocative in my description here. In general, I see books, publishers, and authors use the category label LGBTQ+ to indicate philosophical adherence to broad-spectrum inclusion, while in practice I find that it signals a primary (and often overwhelming) focus on gay male characters. So, to some extent, this label is out of place within a list of terms used to identify books featuring women in homoerotic relationships. Perhaps oddly, LGBTQ+ is more likely to have this male-skewing than "queer" does. I haven't observed LGBTQ+ to corespond to any particular expectations in content, authorship, or publisher.
So that's my fuzzy cumulative impression of the emergent definitions of these words in a publishing context. Does it match your impressions? Are there other correlations that you've noticed?
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ThinkingTuesday, April 24, 2018 - 07:01
Hey, look! I actually got my BayCon schedule up on the blog a month before the convention starts! I'm going to be on some really intriguing panels. The one about "What did it look like when our ancestors created and wore costumes?" looks particularly intriguing and a refreshing take on historic costuming. (Going to have to dig up my references on Italian Renaissance pageantry, on felted animal masks from early medieval Scandinavia, and all the other fun stuff.) The one on healing magic in fantasy could get exciting--I hope the panel includes at least one person who's dealt with significant real-life medical issues. I've seen some interesting discussions online about the intersection of magical healing motifs with disability issues in fiction and I hope we get to cover that angle. And, of course, the panels on brainstorming and research are always fun.
I haven't applied to do a reading because the email indicated that they want to prioritize people who have a new book out or coming out. As always, if you're planning to be at the convention and would like to meet up with me at some point, I always like to have some meal plans set ahead of time to help mitigate my social anxiety. So please feel free to ping me if you're interested.
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ConventionsMonday, April 23, 2018 - 07:00
While one of the underlying purposes of the LHMP as a resource for authors is to find examples of women in history who engaged in same-sex relationships, when clear examples from women's lives are not available, a second purpose is to identify cultural experiences that women could have recognized as reflecting their same-sex desires. Or, in simpler terms, if a character in a historical fiction didn't have direct experience of same-sex love, what might she encounter that would validate the concept? What was there in her environment that could "give her ideas"?
This is exactly the sort of phenomenon that Drouin discusses in her concept of a "public" focused on the representation of the goddess Diana in early modern culture. Could Diana have served as an inspiration and validation for women attracted to the idea of an all-woman society that shunned male contact and enjoyed erotic relationships with each other? Even though the historic context made it unlikely that such women could live out such an ideal, simply being able to conceive of it could be a step toward embracing (*cough*, as it were) same-sex desires.
I know that the idea has certainly spawned some plot-bunnies in my own head!
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LHMPFull citation:
Drouin, Jennifer. 2009. “Diana’s Band: Safe Spaces, Publics, and Early Modern Lesbianism” in Queer Renaissance Historiography, Vin Nardizzi, Stephen Guy-Bray & Will Stockton, eds. Ashgate, Burlington VT. ISBN 978-0-7546-7608-9
Publication summary:
A collection of articles generally on queer approaches to literary history in 16th century England.
Drouin, Jennifer. 2009. “Diana’s Band: Safe Spaces, Publics, and Early Modern Lesbianism”
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
While one of the underlying purposes of the LHMP as a resource for authors is to find examples of women in history who engaged in same-sex relationships, when clear examples from women's lives are not available, a second purpose is to identify cultural experiences that women could have recognized as reflecting their same-sex desires. Or, in simpler terms, if a character in a historical fiction didn't have direct experience of same-sex love, what might she encounter that would validate the concept? What was there in her environment that could "give her ideas"?
This is exactly the sort of phenomenon that Drouin discusses in her concept of a "public" focused on the representation of the goddess Diana in early modern culture. Could Diana have served as an inspiration and validation for women attracted to the idea of an all-woman society that shunned male contact and enjoyed erotic relationships with each other? Even though the historic context made it unlikely that such women could live out such an ideal, simply being able to conceive of it could be a step toward embracing (*cough*, as it were) same-sex desires.
I know that the idea has certainly spawned some plot-bunnies in my own head!
ETA: (Added 2025/02/16 while doing this blog organization) The above was, of course, the first inspiration for the romance series "Diana's Band" for which the first story "Bound in Bitterness" is now in print.
# # #
The article takes a critical look at the concept of “chastity” as an attribute of the mythical goddess Diana, especially as interpreted in early modern literature and art, and at the depiction of Diana as the focus and leader of a community of women who reject romantic and erotic interactions with men, but engage in those interactions with each other. It is not entirely anachronistic to claim that across multiple texts and contexts, Diana has a stable identity as the leader of a “lesbian separatist” community, and that she functions as a signifier of homoeroticism between women in the same way that the figure of Ganymede does for men.
The article considers three types of contexts that provide opportunities for female homoeroticism (the author labels them “safe spaces” but the reader should beware of interpreting this term according to current pop culture use). Drouin labels them--I believe with deliberately provocative intent--“the closet”, the nunnery, and Diana’s band.
By “closet” Drouin means the private domestic space belonging to the mistress of a household (about which more later). The concept of the nunnery in early modern literature went beyond the literal religious institutions and included use of the term for any deliberately gender-exclusive community of women, as in Margaret Cavendish’s Convent of Pleasure. And the specific focus on this article--the motif of Diana’s band--provides a conceptual space for homoeroticism from two angles: within the text itself, and within the context of the text’s creation and consumption. This productive context is seen among a variety of authors across an extended period who create an intellectual “public” of writers, readers, and playgoers centered around the figure of Diana. [Note: while this article is focused on textual depictions, the same cultural context created a wealth of artistic depictions of female homoeroticism revolving around the figure of Diana.]
While the “closet” incidentally afforded a private gender-segregated space, and the nunnery created an all-female community in part defined by the negation of heterosexual expectations, the image of Diana and her followers constituted a deliberate creation and depiction of same-sex eroticism. The acceptability of this depiction was enabled by the heteronormative definition of “chastity” that focused solely on an avoidance of extra-marital penetrative sex. If non-penetrative erotics between women were not “sex” then they did not violate the requirements of chastity. Thus Diana could be celebrated as “the virgin goddess”, stories involving her could emphasize her ruthless requirement for chastity among her followers, and yet still allow scope for the unambiguous depiction of erotic activity within her community.
Drouin suggests that the alleged “invisibility” of female same-sex eroticism in early modern Europe was, in part, a product of the patriarchal fixation on the control of women’s bodies and actions very narrowly within the scope of reproduction and paternity. Discussions of fornication and unchastity were unconcerned with issues of love and affection, but only with the potential for illegitimate pregnancy that challenged patriarchal kinship structures. Within this context, women’s intimate friendships and even erotic relationships could be considered “innocent”. And the structures for controlling women’s interactions with “forbidden” men in fact created and enabled same-sex opportunities. Diana’s band creates an ideal fictional location for imagining same-sex erotics as the emphasis on (heterosexual) chastity deflects accusations of impropriety.
Drouin justifies her choice to use the term “lesbian” in discussing this topic, noting that not only was the word in circulation by the 16th century (see e.g., Brantôme), but that it clearly identifies the sexual activities under consideration even if there was no concept of a personal identity defined by those activities. She notes various textual references in Italy and England that support the existence of a conceptual category of “women who have sex with women”. At the same time, these (male-authored) sources support the concept that sex between women did not fall within the category of adultery. A woman could not make her female partner’s husband a cuckold. And conversely, to the extent that some women who engaged in lesbian sex were seen as “masculine”, this could be treated as a positive character trait in a way that a man appearing “feminine” could not be.
Returning to the concept of the “closet” as lesbian safe space, Drouin explains the layout of the early modern domestic space. The word closet did not have its modern sense of a small storage space, but referred to an inner, private room generally entered off the bedchamber (which was a more public space) that served as a sitting room also used for dining and reception of guests. It also typically served as a bedchamber for (female) servants. The most relevant function was that of a space where the (female) occupant of the bedchamber could retire in the expectation of privacy for pursuits like reading, studying, writing, or to entertain her closest friends. (This is in contrast to spaces like the hall, which were entirely public.) The closet was also set apart in being one of the rare rooms that was kept locked. These features made it a convenient space for extramarital sexuality (as detailed in a couple of Brantôme’s stories).
The nunnery goes one step further in not only removing women from the male gaze and in the creation of a structured separate community, but by removing women entirely from the marriage economy. Male discomfort with these aspects was reflected in the symbolic sexualization of convents by appropriating its terminology for prostitution (a woman-focused space of a different kind). But the vocabulary of the convent was not only transferred to the brothel, but was used for other types of literary female separatist spaces. In turn, the nature of those spaces re-created the potential for lesbian erotics, as in Margaret Cavendish’s play The Convent of Pleasure though, as in some of the Diana myths, the transgressive nature of the enactment of those erotics is deflected by introducing a man in disguise as the instigator. Even so, such literary works create a space for imagining lesbian erotics. Lady Happy and her beloved princess “embrace and kiss and hold each other in their arms” and not until the final act is the audience informed that the “princess” is a man in disguise. The lesbian space has been established and enjoyed, despite the later contradiction.
Both the closet and the convent had drawbacks in terms of creating an actual community of same-sex erotic affiliation. The closet was a private space, the convent subject to (male) hierarchical authority. In contrast, within the internal context of the Diana stories, lesbian eroticism was both public and authoritative.
Drouin now goes into an explanation and definition of the concept of a “public” (in some sort of specialized jargon sense) which I am going to quote at length. “Publics are voluntary, usually not essential to members’ livelihood, and based on taste and on interest. These conditions of membership distinguish publics from other forms of association whose members are bound together by rank, vocation or profession, religion, parentage, or investment. Each public seeks a voice, exercises or seeks to exercise some measure of agency, has an implicit political dimension, has a normalizing function, seeks to imagine and define what it is, and is non-official but has some relation to the official. Publics aspire to grow and are therefore open to strangers. Since they grow and evolve, publics can come into and out of being, ceasing to be a public once they achieve recognition and become institutionalized. Each public has a spatial dimension, as it exists and functions in a more or less delimited space, and each has a characteristic form of expression as defined by a particular medium.”
[Note: I am really really tempted to just go ahead and substitute the word “fandom” for Drouin’s use of “public” here. Even if there are technical differences between this concept of a “public” and the usual sense of “fandom”, I think it’s a useful tool for understanding what’s being talked about.]
Within this theory of publics, the motif of Diana’s band creates a public space in which lesbian desire and erotic acts can be expressed and become intelligible within society. Art historican Patricia Simons observes that paintings of Diana’s band in the 15-16th centuries consistently represent the women engaging in homoerotic activity with each other. And even though the best known examples are produced by male artists, presumably for male consumption, they were equally available to female viewers as a source for imagining erotic possibilities. Diana’s “chastity” was solidly associated with female same-sex eroticism in late medieval and early modern Italy. In addition to the art, Simons cites folkloric practices of women “gathering in the forest to practice ‘the games of Diana’.” (Some of the examples suggest a conflation or at least ambiguity between lesbianism and witchcraft here.)
English examples of this association appear in William Warner’s 1586 history Albion’s England and Thomas Heywood’s 1611 play The Golden Age. Both treat the Ovidian myth of Calisto, a member of Diana’s band who is seduced/raped by Jupiter in disguise as Diana (or in some versions simply disguised as another nymph).
Both texts include detailed descriptions of the erotic activities of Diana’s nymphs. (Drouin suggests a possible sexual pun in that “nymph” was also an early modern medical term for the labia minora.) A supposedly female same-sex encounter includes fondling of the breasts, kissing, reaching under the skirts to “tickle”. In The Golden Age, Atalanta lays out the social rules and expectations of pair-bonded nymphs who are “bed-fellows” that “sport and play and in their fellowship spend night and day.” The only strict requirement being that they may not engage in sex with men.
Thus, within Diana’s band, the “chaste” opposite of heterosexuality is not an absence of sexual activity, but an embracing of lesbian sexuality. The band is also regularly emphasized as a socially separate space. It is a woman-only community that keeps itself physically apart from men, often in an arcadian natural space.
Drouin diverges from Traub’s take on Diana motifs in early modern English literature such as Two Noble Kinsmen and Gallathea. Traub sees them as positioned “always already in the past, and hence irrecoverable” but Drouin sees the works and characters as creating a “public of lesbian separatists”. The devotees of Diana in these works resist marriage, express erotic desire for women in general and specific, and express a sense of lesbian identity in references to same-sex desire as a “persuasion” or “faith”. Even when the plays require heterosexual resolution for the characters it is not from a change in desire but a surrender to political reality. Emilia in Two Noble Kinsmen is captured in war and forced into marriage. The two protagonists of Gallathea want only to continue their romantic and erotic relationship, it is the social framework that imposes a heterosexual shape on their relationship.
In Gallathea the conflict between Diana and Venus is labeled a conflict between chastity and love, but “love” is consistently defined in terms of heterosexual penetration while the chaste restrictions on Diana’s band do not preclude same-sex erotic desire. And there is a further association within the text between Diana and Sappho that emphasizes same-sex desire.
Drouin sums up her primary theses: “Diana” was consistently used as a euphemism for female same-sex love; the in-story image of “Diana’s band” meets the functional criteria for a “public” in that it is a voluntary association of women who share tastes and interests defined by lesbian erotics and separatism; and on an extra-textual level, the production and reception of works referencing Diana’s band create a real-world “public” implying similar interests. The fact that the production of these texts and art was often done by men with a male audience in mind does not undermine the fact that they also had a female audience. (One of Brantôme’s anecdotes involves a woman being erotically stimulated by viewing a painting of naked women bathing together which may well have been a depiction of Diana’s band.)
Event / person:
Saturday, April 21, 2018 - 07:00
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 50 (previously 21c) - Book Appreciation with Liz Bourke - Transcript
(Originally aired 2018/04/21 - listen here)
Heather Rose Jones: This month, we have a special guest for the book appreciation segment. Liz Bourke is an Irish book reviewer and critic who writes regularly for science fiction and fantasy sites such as Tor-dot-com and Locus magazine. Just last year, she had a collection of some of her critical essays published as Sleeping with Monsters, from Aqueduct Press. Liz has a deep and intense hunger for good lesbian genre fiction, so I invited her onto the show to talk about some of her favorite lesbian historical fiction. Liz, it’s lovely to have you on the show.
Liz Bourke: Thank you for having me, though I should like to include a correction. It’s not necessarily lesbians only that I’m interested in. As a bisexual woman myself, I’m interested in all variety of queer female experience.
H: I’m sorry for the shorthand there; I tend to condense it down.
L: I know, it’s easier to just bung it up, but I come across the sort of bisexual erasure thing a lot, so—
H: Yes, thank you very much for correcting me.
L: So, yes. So, historical fiction with queer women in it. Well, you know what? It’s very fortunate today because I have just come across, in fact, just finished reading a book about—a very interesting historical called The Covert Captain by Jeannelle Ferreira.
H: Oh, you finished that one already?
L: I have. I probably am pronouncing the name wrong, but—let me just bring up the description here, so’s I can remember the characters’ names, because I’m not really that great at names unless I’ve got them in front of me. So, it’s a book about a woman who—a pair of women, one of whom has disguised herself as her dead brother and gone to the wars and spent, like, twelve years in the army. She’s a veteran of Waterloo. And now she’s staying with her commanding officer in his country house because he’s an earl, and she meets his spinster sister, who’s 28 years old, never married, and not really all that interested in getting married either because her three older sisters died in childbirth. Nathaniel, who’s the army veteran captain woman, whose original name was Nora, finds herself having a little courtship with Harriet. Of course, the problem is that Harriet doesn’t know Nathaniel’s not who he seems to be, and Nathaniel doesn’t exactly know whether or not Harriet’s going to be open to finding that out.
H: Yeah.
L: When they do find things out, there is quite a bit of a blow-up.
H: Ah!
L: Including dueling.
H: I will wait and be surprised by who is dueling whom.
L: Yes, no spoilers. But it’s, I mean, it’s—as a historical it’s really well written, and it’s quite short. It’s a little distanced in that at the beginning it takes a little bit of time to kick into gear, and there’s sometimes a little bit of confusion because Nathaniel has post-traumatic stress—kind of flashbacks to the battles—so sometimes things are a little bit confusing in terms of the timeline. But once it gets started, I mean, it’s really hard to put down, and it’s probably—apart from your own work—one of the best examples of historical fiction with queer women in it that I’ve come across so far.
H: I’m really looking forward to reading that one. I’m not sure I’m going to survive waiting until the iBooks version is available. It’s only out on Amazon now, I guess.
L: I know, that’s a pain in the ass. I ordered it.
H: Well, people do what they need to do.
L: Yep.
H: I’m actually thinking of doing a special show on Regency settings for queer women’s historical fiction because I think I’ve got enough titles to actually make a thematic show about it.
L: That probably—I mean, that sounds like fun to me. The other sort of historical that’s been on my mind recently, because I just read the novella sequel to it, is Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory, and the novella sequel to that is “Stone Mad.” And “Stone Mad” is—I mean, I’ve written a review of it for Tor-dot-com, so—I really liked it. It’s a sort of steampunk historical setting in the Northwest, sort of Pacific area of America. And “Stone Mad” is basically about what happens after you’ve started a relationship with someone but before you’ve worked out all the kinks in how you’re going to live your life together and what it means to be essentially married, and what happens when you break someone’s trust.
H: Yeah, how do you weave that relationship to last.
L: And how you work on sort of fitting in with each other. So, Karen and Priya—Karen—there’s a line where Karen says that her lover and partner Priya should tell her that you’ve done fucked up good this time, Karen, and well, she did. She has to figure out how to come back from it. And that’s while there’s a hotel falling down around their ears, a pair of sisters who are probably charlatans, a woman—the widow of a famous magic act, and a tommyknocker who’s got quite a grudge against staying in the hotel. But the main sort of thematic part of this novella is Karen and Priya, and trust and family.
H: Yeah, that strikes me as a good place to take those characters because Karen always struck me as—you know, she’s used to sort of bowling her way through and taking charge, and surviving, because, you know, she isn’t worrying too much about other people’s feelings in it. And yeah, that—
L: Yep, she’s too used to being on her own, and she has to figure out that now her actions aren’t just for her anymore.
H: Uh huh.
L: Which is sort of an interesting—I mean, it’s very seldom that you sort of get established relationships that have to work out things within it.
H: Uh huh. So, how about any older books that have really stuck with you over the years?
L: Oh—to be honest, you know, I only really started reading specifically genre queer women stuff in the last few years, so I’m not really sure I have any sort of idea of what the older stuff is.
H: Okay. I guess you’ve been talking about it—about queer genre fiction—since I’ve started knowing you, pretty much, so I assumed it was a long-term love.
L: No, you probably came across me just after I started discovering that I liked it, so…. It’s only been four or five years, so—
H: That’s true.
L: So yeah, that’s—there’s nothing really older than that. Well, nothing that I know that’s older than that, because I would’ve read it in the last four or five years, really. So, I’ve really—the way my reading goes, I could really only keep up with new stuff at this point in time because of the sort of reviewing schedule. If I can’t fit it into a review or a column, it really tends not to get read—well, if I can’t sort of see the potential for fitting it into a review or a column, it really tends not to get read so much.
H: Yeah, that’s the problem with trying to combine reading for pleasure and reading as a profession.
L: It is just a little bit of a problem, yes, just a very small one. I mean, I do not want to complain at all because it’s an enormous privilege to be able to read as much as I do and essentially to get quite a lot of books sent as publicity copies, but— Yeah, trying to catch up with the backlists, any backlist from a few years ago is—I kind of have to try and carve out space for that. The other fun historical book that I’ve read and that’s stuck in my mind recently is a book by an author with only one name, Jae, called Shaken to the Core, which is about a relationship that starts around the time of the San Francisco earthquake and has—[it] goes through that. It’s quite good about depicting the entire sort of city being on fire sort of thing, and a couple of women who are quite different but find each other anyway.
H: Yeah, for some reason the San Francisco quake seems to be a popular setting for lesbian romance. I’m not sure why.
L: Well, I suppose it’s easy to find information about it. And it’s modern enough that I guess people feel it’s relatable.
H: True. Thank you for sharing some of your favorite historicals, Liz. I know you’ve been working on some fiction of your own, but I won’t ask you to, like, to divulge anything about that. I hope someday I can have you back for an author interview as well. But in the meantime, where can people follow you online if they want to check out your reviews and essays?
L: Well, I’m on Twitter as @hawkwing_lb, and you can find my reviews and essays in Locus magazine and on Tor-dot-com, as well as occasionally on my Patreon, which you can find basically by searching my name on Patreon.
H: I’ll include those links in the show notes along with links to all the books you mentioned. So, thank you again for joining us.
L: Thank you for having me, Heather. It’s been fun.
Show Notes
In the Book Appreciation segments, our featured guest (or your host) will talk about one or more favorite books with queer female characters in a historic setting.
In this episode reviewer Liz Bourke recommends some favorite queer historical novels:
- The Covert Captain, Or, A Marriage of Equals by Jeannelle M. Ferreira
- Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
- Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear
- Shaken to the Core by Jae
A transcript of this podcast may be available here. (Transcripts added when available.)
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Twitter: @heatherosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Links to Liz Bourke Online
- Reviews: Patreon
- Reviews: Tor.com
- Reviews: Locus Magazine
- Twitter: @hawkwing_lb
- Liz has a collection of some of her past SFF reviews which, since the time we recorded the interview, has been announced as a finalist for the Hugo Award in the Best Related Work category. Sleeping With Monsters by Liz Bourke
Major category:
LHMPFriday, April 20, 2018 - 09:54
Big paperback sale on hundreds of titles for this weekend only. You can get Daughter of Mystery or The Mystic Marriage (or many other titles) for only $4.99 each. Mother of Souls isn't included in the sale, but if you've been waiting on a good deal for the set, you'll save so much on the other two you won't mind paying full price for it.
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PromotionTuesday, April 17, 2018 - 08:53
Andrea, Bernadette. 2017. The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. ISBN 978-1-4875-0125-9
I'm always on the lookout for books on history (or art, or literature) that will help expand my default assumptions about the diversity of cultures in the past, particularly in the field of gender and sexuality, but also in terms of ethnicity. I picked this book up last year at Kalamazoo, in part because I'm trying to get a better grasp on the experience of people from Islamic cultures in early modern Europe as grounding for a character in Mistress of Shadows. Although this source isn't particularly useful for that specific project, I started reading it this week in the context of one of my Book Bingo mini-stories, where I'm introducing a character originally brainstormed as a woman from Ottoman Turkey, widow of an Englishman who was part of the trade presence there, who is now building clockwork siege engines as part of the Alliance forces in the Low Countries. (The next Book Bingo square is science fiction and I needed a sci fi motif appropriate for alte 17th century Europe that wouldn't entirely break my overall worldbuilding.) For the Book Bingo project, this work was quite useful in confirming my initial plausibility-sketches. I don't often do full summaries of books that don't fall into the LHMP scope, but maybe I should do them more often.
* * *
The Lives of Girls and Women... looks at women from the Islamic world (though not necessarily documented as Muslims) who came to the British Isles in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The book focuses in particular on how these women were able to express cultural agency and resistance to assimilation even when their presence in England was entirely involuntary, as well as how their foreign identity was depicted within public culture of the time. Rather than try to discover the general demographics of the female Islamicate presence in England, the book focuses on a small number of specific individuals whose names and life stories are known and fairly well documented. Their origins include West African, Tatar, Circassian via Safavid Persia, and Armenian via the Mughal Empire.
Andrea tries to recover their lives from the documentary evidence (and the meticulousness of her project is reflected in the fact that nearly 50% of the page-count is notes, bibliography, and index). She describes England as in a "proto-colonialist and proto-Orientalist" stage at this time, but it was not yet a major international power within the emerging colonial system. The lives of these women were linked to elite Englishwomen such as Queen Elizabeth I and Lady Mary Wroth. The problem of tracing their lives is, in part, reflective of the larger problem of deciphering women's lives in this era.
Here are brief biographies of the women that the text focuses on:
Elen More - A black West African, brought to Scotland by privateers who took her from a Portuguese ship. Elen was most likely taken from her original home as part of the slave trade, but she established a place in the Scottish court that is clearly more that of a lady in waiting than a slave. Elen was featured in early 16th century pageants at the Scottish court as the "Black Queen of Beauty" and presided ceremonially over tournaments in that role. [Note: as I read about her, I immediately recognized the inspiration for Alyssa Cole's historical romance Agnes Moor's Wild Knight and now I may add that to my TBR queue.]
Ipolita the "Tartar Girl" ended up in Queen Elizabeth's court after being "aquired" (read: "bought") by an agent of the Muscovy Company and sent to the queen as a gift. Her function in the court seems to have been roughly that of a pet or mascot, similarly to a woman with dwarfism** that the queen also kept in her employ. Ipolita (a name bestowed on her in England) was the model for a character in Mary Wroth's novel The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, which features several foreign type-characters.
**Please forgive me if I've stumbled in the phrasing of this reference. The text has "female dwarf" which may be a standard historical description but feels othering to me.
Teresa Sampsona was a woman of Circassian origin living in the Safavid empire and possibly related to one of the Shah's concubines. It's unclear whether she was originally Orthodox Christian (as many Circassians were) or Muslim (a possiblity raised later in the context of accusations of apostasy). She met the Englishman Robert Sherley when he was attached to the Shah as his envoy to Christian Europe and Teresa may have been, in effect, given to him as a reward for his services. Teresa was baptized as a Catholic in 1608 (which doesn't preclude the possiblity that she was previously Orthodox) before marrying Robert and they traveled extensively together through Eruope, indcluding extended stays in England on several occasions. She, too, was a model for one of the charcters in the Urania. Teresa was multi-lingual, politically savvy, and possibly martially skilled, as portraits of her (by Anthony van Dyck and others, see this link for the van Dyck portraits) sometimes included a pistol and she is recorded as having saved her husband's life during various encounters with Persian and Portuguese attackers. After her husband's death in Persia, she dealt with several years of persecution from her late husband's enemies and rivals before succeeding in escaping to Europe where she spent her remaining decades in Rome.
Mariam Khanim and Teresa Sampsona's lives intersected in person, despite their separate histories. Mariam was an Armenian subject of the Mughal emperor, the daughter of a high-ranked courtier, and was married successively to two English men associated with the East India Company: William Hawkins and Gabriel Towerson. Mariam's life and experiences were the inspiration for John Dryden's character Ysabinda in his Southeast Asian-set play Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants (1673), although the character is "an almost unidentifieable re-creation," having been converted into an Indonesian princess. Mariam and her husband traveled to England during the same general period as the Sherleys' travels. Like Teresa, Mariam was highly unlikely to have had any volition in her marriage to a Englishman and appears to have been part of a bribe to keep Hawkins at the Mughal court. When Hawkins did finally leave two years later, Mariam's family tried to prevent her from leaving (again, it being unclear what her own feelings were on the matter). Hawkins died during the voyage back to England and Mariam promptly married another East India Company captain, Gabriel Towerson. Financial need was probably a driving force, though Mariam petitioned the Company on her own behalf for compensation as Hawkins' widow. Two years later, the couple returned to India after which her husband left her and died in battle and Mariam vanishes from the written record.
Andrea presents fascinating evidence that Teresa Sampsonia and her husband Robert, while sailing back to Persia in 1613 encountered the ship carrying Mariam Khanim and her husband, traveling form India to England, when both ships put in for supplies at the Cape of Good Hope. And for a further connection, correspondence to Teresa and her husband from a friend back in England notes that Mariam had visited their son Robert (who had remained in England). [This sort of detail is particularly interesting in the context of the "historic plausibility" of multiple marginalized characters interacting in historical fiction.]
Andrea's book also spends several chapters looking at how these women were represented or interpreted in English literature of the time (such as the Urania, but also including some of Shakespeare's works). If you have any interest in the general topic of diversity in European history, I recommend checking this book out.
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ReviewsMonday, April 16, 2018 - 07:00
Historical studies of prominent women such as Queen Elizabeth I often focus on the men who filled key positions in their governments or who served as advisors. Such an approach that looks primarily at formal structures can overlook the immense power and influence that women had in a social context where people spent most of their lives in gender-segregated contexts. If you wanted to present your petition and plead your case to a woman like Queen Elizabeth, the most efficient means was not to approach Burghley or Walsingham, but to have a personal connection with one of the gentlewomen of the chamber--the women who interacted directly with the queen every day in her private spaces. This article looks at such "unofficial" personal networks between women in early modern England, and especially as they revolve around the role of secretary--literally the person who in entrusted with and and keeps one's secrets. While some prominent women might have male secretaries to handle their correspondence, the social context made it far more likely that a woman would fill a role such as this that expected and required a level of trust, faithfulness, and intimacy that were hard to achieve across the genders at that time.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Crawford, Julie. 2009. “Women’s Secretaries” in Queer Renaissance Historiography, Vin Nardizzi, Stephen Guy-Bray & Will Stockton, eds. Ashgate, Burlington VT. ISBN 978-0-7546-7608-9
Publication summary:
A collection of articles generally on queer approaches to literary history in 16th century England.
Crawford, Julie. 2009. “Women’s Secretaries”
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
Historical studies of prominent women such as Queen Elizabeth I often focus on the men who filled key positions in their governments or who served as advisors. Such an approach that looks primarily at formal structures can overlook the immense power and influence that women had in a social context where people spent most of their lives in gender-segregated contexts. If you wanted to present your petition and plead your case to a woman like Queen Elizabeth, the most efficient means was not to approach Burghley or Walsingham, but to have a personal connection with one of the gentlewomen of the chamber--the women who interacted directly with the queen every day in her private spaces. This article looks at such "unofficial" personal networks between women in early modern England, and especially as they revolve around the role of secretary--literally the person who in entrusted with and and keeps one's secrets. While some prominent women might have male secretaries to handle their correspondence, the social context made it far more likely that a woman would fill a role such as this that expected and required a level of trust, faithfulness, and intimacy that were hard to achieve across the genders at that time.
# # #
Crawford tackles the intriguing topic of women in 16-17th century England serving as secretaries--both in official and de facto positions--especially in service to other women. She particularly looks at the function of a secretary as an advisor and secret-keeper. As the Oxford English Dictionary gives for the first definition of the word: “One who is entrusted with private or secret matters; a confidant; one privy to a secret.” (Keep in mind that the root of “secretary” is “secret”.) The second definition, involving the job of managing correspondence, developed later but is also a significant sense in the 16th century. And, indeed, one of the contextual citations in the OED for this sense is feminine, though allegorical, referring to Mary Sidney Herbert as “eloquent secretary to the Muses.”
While studies of secretaries in the 16th century commonly focus solely on men who served women in this role--especially those serving Elizabeth I--Crawford seeks to recognize women themselves fulfilling the role of secretary. The general omission may in part be due to a focus on the function of secretaries in those social spheres less open to women, and especially on the significant homosocial bonds between men in these functions in the public sphere. But 16th century writers had no problem with accepting that women might fill the role of secretary for other women, in particular fulfilling the role of private counselor and often serving as intimate confidante.
There is a brief survey of examples of women secretaries and their duties: Hannah Wolley in The Gentlewoman’s Companion (1674) describes handling her mistress’s correspondence; Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World features a female scribe working for another woman; and there are numerous examples of women whose secretarial duties involved reading aloud to their employer. One pair that may be of particular interest is the Countess of Bedford and court poet Cecilia Bulstrode, whom Ben Jonson satirized with an accusation of lesbianism.
The women serving female monarchs, such as Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne fulfilled an interwoven set of official and unofficial secretarial duties that are hard to untangle from more intimate services. At the upper levels of society, women shared beds as well as secrets with their closest companions and the women in service to powerful employers enjoyed significant control over access to their attention. Crawford suggests that such close relationships--although not considered sexual in their historic context--could not avoid having an erotic component. The article examines the role of these female secretaries in terms of specific types of functions.
The first of those functions examined is “bosom counsel and bed-sharing,” that is, someone to serve as a close confidante--“close” in both a metaphoric and physical sense. As Angel Day put it in The English Secretarie (1592) a secretary is someone “in whose bosome he holdeth the repose of his [master’s] safety to be far more precious then either estate, living, or advancement, whereof men earthly minded are for the most part desirous.”
The word “bosom,” literally meaning “breast” and extended to the clothing covering it, came metaphorically to mean both closeness and discretion. Papers and letters meant not to be seen were tucked beneath clothing on the upper body, embodying the idea of secret speech entrusted to the bearer. Inescapably, the language of taking someone to one’s bosom, or sharing one’s bosom evokes images of female erotic intimacy. Examples of such language between women is offered from several Shakespearean works such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing.
These female confidantes in Shakespeare often combine the sharing of secrets with the sharing of a bed. Here the complicated interpretation of bed-sharing must be examined. In early modern England, it was normal and expected for people of the same sex to share a bed. (If nothing else, housing logistics and less than ideal home heating arrangements made it desirable.) Bedfellows might be siblings, close friends, host and guest, employer and servant, random travelers staying at the same inn. But such arrangements did also involve complex social politics and could both indicate and negotiate friendships and alliances. Sharing a bed was de facto an intimate relationship and offered the opportunity for private conversation that could lead to possibilities for advice and influence as well as strengthening inter-personal bonds. And it was a context that provided opportunity for homoerotic interactions, regardless of how the participants might have understood and classified those interactions.
The article quotes correspondence about bed-sharing that uses erotically charged language (with all the necessary caveats about interpreting it as specifically sexual). In 1603 Lady Anne Clifford writes in regard to her cousin Frances Bourchier (they later had significant social ties throughout their lives), “[she] got the key of my chamber and lay with me which was the first time I loved her so very well.” A different letter describing the same event mentions a third party, “I lay all night with my cousin Frances Bourchier and Mrs. Mary Cary, which was the first beginning of the greatness between us.” Clifford wrote two years later to her mother about not sleeping with Lady Arabella Stuart “which she very much desires” and which her mother had urged.
These were personal connections, but also the creation and strengthening of political alliances with consequences for the extended families of all the women involved. Anne Clifford had a number of young women of good family in her service--a key part of the life cycle of the upper classes when such bonds were established. The question of sharing sleeping quarters and beds was a dynamic part of making those bonds for the future, in part because of the opportunities for “knowledge exchange” in a private context.
The second type of function covered under the position of secretary was identified by terms such as chambermaid and handmaid. Changes in meaning can result in misunderstandings about the functions involved. “Chambermaid” in this context does not simply mean some who does household cleaning, but a servant responsible for a woman’s personal, private sphere (the “chamber”) and so someone with regular and reliable access to her employer. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when Maria is identified as Olivia’s “chambermaid” it is clear from context that hers is a position of significant power and influence within the household. A connection is made with Queen Elizabeth’s “gentlewomen of the privy chamber” who were recognized for their potential as influential intermediaries and were sought out to transmit letters, petitions, and requests to the queen. This is the same sort of role that Maria fills for Olivia--a role of such responsibility that Maria can write letters in Olivia’s name and hand and have them taken for her mistress’s word.
A third function associated with the secretary is that of someone expected to be present within their employer’s private spaces and interactions and to keep those transactions secure.
The friend/counselor/secretary relationship between women was seen as qualitatively different from their relationships with men due to the absence of gendered differentials of power. It could function as resistance to patriarchal structures even when it served political networks inextricably linked to patriarchal authority. Female same-sex interactions served an ideal of fidelity and equality that worked against external tyrannies. But in some ways, the concept of consilium (advice) was itself a gendered concept, with the “counselor” understood as pairing with the person being advised in relationships that mirrored gendered pairings such as husband and wife. Thus women were, in some ways, seen as always standing in a consilium function in any relationship.
The article expands on this with an extended look at the characters of Paulina and Hermione in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale and how Paulina’s function as counselor, “gatekeeper”, and eventually guardian of the queen’s most important secret (her continued existence) makes her both a prototype of key secretarial functions and an example of how those functions can act to resist tyrrany. Another literary example that is a more direct allegorical representation of real-world politics is Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, where various of the female characters serve this function of advisor and secret-keeper for each other.
The author concludes with a summary of how secretary-like functions between women in early modern England were an integrated part of women’s social and political power, as well as illustrating the complex possibilities of same-sex intimacy and eroticism that underlay the ostensibly heterosexual foundations of society.
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Event / person:
Friday, April 13, 2018 - 08:30
The seventh category of Jae's Lesbian Book Bingo 2018 challenge is Fake Relationship. I'm adapting the trope a little because usually it refers to two characters who have to pretend to be in a relationship and then find themselves in love after all. As you'll see, I've reorganized the components a little, in part because of the demands and direction of the overall story structure.
I need to give a content advisory for this story because some people seriously dislike the motif of an unwilling gender reveal. I thought seriously about choosing this particular event for the necessary shift in character direction. If I had set up Magdalena/Pieter as in any way being gender-questioning I wouldn't have used it. But I tried to be very careful about showing both of my Dutch soldiers as identifying clearly as women who are using male disguise for economic purposes and personal freedom. So this is not a story about someone being forced back into a rejected gender role, but about someone being forced back into abandoned social restrictions. That said, I know that not everyone finds the motif palatable so I wanted to make sure they have the chance to avoid it.
I've reined myself back to a shorter length for this snippet and it probably feels unfinished in terms of even a micro-plot. Currently I'm setting up a three-snippet story arc that will introduce a new character in the next bit and give Lena a new and even more adventurous romance in the end. [ETA: I've made some minor edits since originally posting this.]
Follow the Drum: Reprise (Lesbian Book Bingo: Fake Relationship)
They ransomed us at last from the French at Montigny. Maybe it isn’t fair to say “at last”. It wasn’t as if the French wanted the burden of dozens of Alliance prisoners, but it takes time to arrange for exchanges and calculate the worth of lives. It was long enough that Martijn’s wound had healed except for a limp that she tried to hide from the officer who took charge of us. We had grown expert at hiding. Sometimes even Martijn didn’t notice the small burdens I took from her, especially on that first long march away from captivity. It was what a comrade did.
That was what we’d become: comrades. There was a time I thought we might become lovers—more than the simple fact of sharing comfort and passion within our combined bedroll when we thought it safe—but instead we’d settled into something closer and more comfortable. When I first put on a uniform and followed the drum, my desire to see the world and have adventures was tangled up with that other desire. I still thought I liked women more than I’d ever like a man, but Martijn… Well, and Martijn had told me about Mayken, and how she hoped she might still be waiting for her back home even though they hadn’t promised each other anything. It was strange to think that there was still a place called home after everything we’d seen.
The regiment we’d served in before Montigny was off in the Germanies now and the end of our march was a camp with English flags before the officers’ tents and a babble of different voices. I’d learned bits of French in the past months but English danced just out of reach. It sounded like it ought to be no harder to understand than the soldiers from Leeuwarden, but the words always slipped sideways out of my head.
After the quiet and stillness of close confinement, the camp was crowded and noisy. At the other side of the parade ground from the officers was a fenced off space with enough clanging and hammering for five blacksmiths and a crowd of strange engines whose use I couldn’t imagine. On the far side of that was a sprawling civilian camp of the sort that grew up any time the army stayed in one place long enough: the wives and children of soldiers, as well as women less particular in their affections. Steaming cauldrons of laundry and the smoke of cook-fires mixed with the scents of better food than Martijn and I had enjoyed in months, even though it was nothing but soup with a single scrawny chicken in a big pot. At least we wouldn’t have to do our own cooking and washing until we marched away again.
That was where they took us after we’d passed inspection in front of the officers and been assigned to a new regiment. With bowls and spoons in hand, we lined up with resigned patience for a share of whatever was in the cook-pot and a chunk of bread. Martijn was staring at the ground with that look she got when her leg was aching and she was too tired to do more than put one foot in front of the other. I nudged her to close up the gap in the line so no one would push past us. “Maybe they’ll have some beer.”
Martijn shrugged. “Not unless someone’s willing to give us credit until we’re paid.”
I started calculating how we might find some spare coins before that. We were already in debt for a tent and bedrolls and that was before thinking about the state of our clothing. That distraction was why I didn’t notice anything about the woman who was ladling out the food except that she had a baby slung across her back and a small child tugging at her skirts. Not until it was my turn to hold up my bowl for her to fill.
I recognized her half a breath before her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open.
“Lena?” she cried in disbelief.
It was too late to warn her off, to hush her, to beg her silence.
“Lena? What are you doing here like this?”
Two steps beyond, Martijn had frozen in place, staring at us both.
“Greta, please!” I asked softly and urgently. “Please don’t.”
It had been two years since I’d seen my cousin Greta back in Zendoorn. Two years—the age of the boy holding on to her skirt and staring up at me. She’d followed the drum in her own way but in all the wide world, why had we ended up in the same camp?
It was too late. The officer in charge of seeing the new arrivals settled had heard the outcry and come over to see.
“You know this soldier?” he asked.
“Soldier?” she said scornfully. “That’s my cousin Magdalena, she’s no more soldier than I am.”
I think I was angrier at her for denying me that title than for exposing me to scorn. I’d marched and sweated and bled as a soldier. That should count for something. But now the officer was staring at me closely with a frown. Before I knew what he was about, he’d grabbed me by the shoulder and put his other hand between my legs to feel for the thing that wasn’t there. I shoved him away, not caring for rank, or that my supper had just gone spilling away in the dirt, or that I’d blushed as red as a beet. Not caring that he could have me whipped just for pushing him like that, never mind for what else I’d done.
But he only laughed and rolled his eyes and said, “Sweet Christ, another soldier-girl! And you—”
He turned on Martijn and my heart froze.
“Please sir,” I begged, clutching at his sleeve. “Please, I only did it to be with my sweetheart. There wasn’t time for us to be married before he marched away. Martijn didn’t want me treated like a common camp follower. Don’t blame him sir!”
Was it enough to turn his suspicions away? I babbled away my reputation, my pride—anything to protect Martijn.
Greta let out a long gust of laughter. “Oh Lena, you were so prissy when I had to marry my man, and here you are no better than you should be! You put her in my hands, sir. I’ll teach her what it means to be a soldier’s wife. And maybe we can get a pastor to bless them before her belly swells too big.”
She took me by the wrist and called for someone else to take her place at the kettle. I barely had time to look back over my shoulder at Martijn who still stood frozen in place without a word of protest or defense. But what could she have said that would do more than make things worse?
* * *
Greta found a skirt for me. The weight of it felt comfortably familiar around my legs, though I'd finally grown accustomed to breeches too. “Keep the coat,” she said. It seemed like half the women in the civilian camp were wearing bits and pieces of old uniforms. “You can sleep with me for now. Help me keep an eye on the boys. There’s plenty to do so make yourself busy.”
And just like that I went from being a soldier on the march to cooking and mending and looking after babies. All the things I thought I’d left behind. It wasn’t that I thought less of women like Greta whose entire world was caught up in home, even the home of an army camp. Maybe someday I'd want all that too. But not now, not yet. I thought back on the plans Martijn and I had shared: the places we’d go together, the cites we wanted to see, maybe even taking ship for far lands. We’d been comrades. Equals. Not just Martijn and me, but all the men we’d marched with. And now I was just “Martijn’s sweetheart who put on trousers to follow him.”
It was two days before Martijn came to find me where I was turning a spit, trying to keep Greta’s boy amused so he wouldn’t stumble into the fire, and fighting a headache from the unending pounding of metal from the engineer’s camp beside us.
“Magdalena?” she asked hesitantly. The name was awkward in her mouth because I’d been Pieter so long.
I hesitated, wondering what to say, but there were people watching who’d heard about us so I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her like all the other women did with their husbands and sweethearts. It gave me a chance to whisper in her ear, “Is all well?”
Martijn nodded. She pitched her voice low. “I’m sorry about…all of this. We’ll figure out what to do somehow.”
“What to do? They’ll find someone to marry us. What else can we do? What other excuse do I have for being here?”
“Pieter—Lena, we can’t! It’s not… We aren’t…” She broke away from the embrace and threw her hands up in a shrug. “We can’t be married in God’s eyes, it would be a lie.”
I hissed at her, “I don’t care what God thinks, I care what Greta thinks and what your commanding officer thinks.”
Martijn was afraid, I could see that. I couldn’t tell whether she was more afraid of God or of her own disguise being found out. Was she sorry she’d let me join her on that fateful day back in Zendoorn?
“Martijn, you told me before that a comrade who shared your secret made you safer. A wife who shares it will make you safer yet. It’s like you said back at De Leeuw: nothing works better to convince people you’re a man than having a woman.”
Having a woman, like one might have a gun or a pair of boots. I didn’t like it any more than she did, but we both had too much to lose. No, that wasn’t true. I’d already lost almost everything. I’d lose that last scrap of respect unless we married. Without a ring, I’d be just one more fallen woman, considered common to anyone who took a fancy to me.
“Lena—,” she began.
But then I had to scramble to pull Greta’s boy out of danger and give the spit a turn so the meat wouldn’t burn, and when I looked up again, Martijn had left.
(copyright 2018 Heather Rose Jones, all rights reserved)
Major category:
PromotionTuesday, April 10, 2018 - 08:00
I've had a few movies on my to-review list since I watched them last year, so here is me giving up on writing anything lengthy and thoughtful in order to catch up on all the movies and tv series I can remember watching that I haven't talked about yet.
Battle of the Sexes (2017) - A dramatized biopic about the publicity-stunt tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973. The movie provides a fascinating behind the scenes look at Riggs' motivations in setting up the stunt, as well as giving a good picture of the no-win situation in which it put the various female tennis champions that he tried to drag into it. If he won, hey, it proves men are inherently superior to women; if they won, hey, they were world champions up against a middle-aged amateur, what does it prove? The movie also includes a very sweet low-key look at King's romance with Marilyn Barnett. The one aspect of the film's depiction that rather grated on me was how it tried to frame Riggs' over-the-top sexist rhetoric as being an obvious put-on, even in a context where the outrageous economic discrimination againt women's tennis was part of the plot. I'm sorry, but I remember the 1970s and I remember the media around the "battle of the sexes" and there was no sense that the men publicly bashing on women's competence and professionalism were "ha ha just joking to be theatrical." Riggs was an asshole and the men who encouraged him were assholes and the media who played along were assholes and we still have to deal with people like them. So don't try to make him "loveable".
Coco (2017) - Pixar makes another heart-wrenching story about love and family and pursuing your dreams. Don't get me wrong: I loved this movie, with all its plot twists and turns, and I loved the conclusion, and everything. But it's a typical Pixar story in how it completely centers the male characters and their relationships. The animation is glorious. The cultural references were fun. (I totally loved the idea of Frida Kahlo doing artistic design in the afterworld.) I'm aware that Pixar went through some cultural rough spots in developing this story and came perilously close to making a complete hash of it. And however well they succeeded after regrouping, there's still a strong whiff of cultural objectification, but it's not my place to judge how well they succeeded or failed on the cultural end.
Black Panther (2018) - I've kept swearing off superhero movies and keep getting lured back to give them one more chance. This is the first time I've had no regrets at all about giving in. Not only is the movie visually glorious and full of a far more complex and nuanced plot than is typical for the genre, but it was chock full of strong, beautiful female characters with immense agency within the plot. It says a lot that this movie, headlined by a male character, felt to me twice as strong on female presence as Wonder Woman did. I really enjoyed how the movie engaged with the flaws and conflicts within its own premises (regarding the pros and cons of isolationism). And I'm overjoyed that it has done so well at the box office, though--like many woman-centered films--it has clearly been held to an impossible standard of success. If it had merely been the third highest-grossing superhero film in history, one gets the sense that the usual suspects would have tut-tutted, "Well, we gave it a try to center a non-white story, but it just didn't work out." Yay for overwhelming success, but lets keep moving toward a world where we can get broader representation in films without them needing to be superachievers to be considered viable.
A Wrinkle in Time (2018) - This was another visually-gorgeous, daring movie, with casting that went beyond the usual defaults. But although I loved the cinematic experience, I found the plot mildly incoherent. A few weeks later, I have a hard time remembering more than scattered snapshots of imagery. (I read the book a very very long time ago and didn't refresh before seeing the movie, but that was probably for the best.)
And now for a couple of TV shows that I've belatedly been tasting via iTunes.
Wynona Earp - On a whim (and based on a vast amorphous pressure from fans in my larger internet community) I picked up the first two sesasons of this weird western show and have watched the first four episodes. That's been enough to conclude it just isn't for me. Oh, I can see the beginnings of the same-sex romance that everyone is so excited about, but there are too many elements in the show that just Aren't My Thing, mostly the regular, extended gruesome violence and the "bad girl" main character. Sorry, but I just don't get the appeal of violent nihilistic self-desctructive protagonists.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Once again, I was inspired by the general love this show gets from my internet community to give it a try. And after the first two episodes I'm really kind of "meh." I don't like the protagonists. Either of them. And I don't think there's a single female character who rises above the level of cardboard.
So that catches me up on the visual media reviews, I think. Next to tackle getting caught up on books.
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